1. Describe Jan Chipchase's prior job (he now works at frog design http://www.frogdesign.com/) in relation to his work at Nokia. What are the two names he is given in the article? (3 paragraphs)
Jan Chipchase’s prior job was working for the Finnish cellphone company Nokia. He was given two names in the article, one being a “human-behavior researcher” and the other being “user anthropologist.”
He is called a human-behavior researcher because his mission is to peer into the lives of other people (regular people, especially people in developing countries), accumulating as much knowledge as possible about their behavior so that he can feed helpful bits of information back to designers, technologist and marketing people in Nokia.
He is also known as an user anthropologist because this sort of on-the-ground intelligence-gathering is crucial to what’s known as human-centered design. It’s a business-world niche that has become especially important in the ultra-competitive high-tech field. Other companies including Intel, Motorola and Microsoft employ trained anthropologists to study potential customers. Even though Chipchase have degree in design, but his work is definitely more like an anthropologist’s.
2. “It’s really quite striking,” Hammond says. “What people are voting for with their pocketbooks, as soon as they have more money and even before their basic needs are met, is telecommunications.” (World Resources Institute) In the spirit of this quote, describe four instances of how owning a cellphone enables users to better their lives. (4 paragraphs/ one for each instance)
One example from the article was about a mother in Uganda who needs to carry a child with malaria three hours to visit the nearest doctor but who would like to know first whether that doctor is even in town. In this case, if the mother did not have a cellphone, she would walk three hours; arrive at the hospital/clinic, possibly only to find that the doctor wasn’t even there in the first place. Her child would not be cured, one can only imagine what would happen if the child’s disease was fatal.
Another example would be the rural Ugandan doctor who, faced with an emergency, is able to request information via text message from a hospital in Kampala. To explain this further, let’s say the rural doctor does not have a certain drug to cure his patient; it would be too time consuming to go to all of the other hospitals in the area. If he had a cellphone, he can easily text message all nearby hospitals to see which one has the drug he needed.
Another example would be the porter who spent his days hanging around outside of department stores and construction sites hoping to be hired to carry other people’s loads. But with a cellphone, he can go only where the jobs are. This would save his lots of time and energy and make him more efficient.
And lastly, fishermen off the coast of Kerala in southern India can also better their lives with cellphones. Before having a cellphone, fishermen may catch too much fish without having any potential buyers. (excessive supply, no demand) However, after investing in cellphones, fishermen can use them to call around to prospective buyers before they’d even got their catch to shore, they benefit by increasing their profit while local consumers benefit by the decrease of price of fish in the local marketplace.
1. Describe Jan Chipchase's prior job (he now works at frog design http://www.frogdesign.com/) in relation to his work at Nokia. What are the two names he is given in the article? (3 paragraphs)
Jan Chipchase’s prior job was working for the Finnish cellphone company Nokia. He was given two names in the article, one being a “human-behavior researcher” and the other being “user anthropologist.”
He is called a human-behavior researcher because his mission is to peer into the lives of other people (regular people, especially people in developing countries), accumulating as much knowledge as possible about their behavior so that he can feed helpful bits of information back to designers, technologist and marketing people in Nokia.
He is also known as an user anthropologist because this sort of on-the-ground intelligence-gathering is crucial to what’s known as human-centered design. It’s a business-world niche that has become especially important in the ultra-competitive high-tech field. Other companies including Intel, Motorola and Microsoft employ trained anthropologists to study potential customers. Even though Chipchase have degree in design, but his work is definitely more like an anthropologist’s.
2. “It’s really quite striking,” Hammond says. “What people are voting for with their pocketbooks, as soon as they have more money and even before their basic needs are met, is telecommunications.” (World Resources Institute)
In the spirit of this quote, describe four instances of how owning a cellphone enables users to better their lives. (4 paragraphs/ one for each instance)
One example from the article was about a mother in Uganda who needs to carry a child with malaria three hours to visit the nearest doctor but who would like to know first whether that doctor is even in town. In this case, if the mother did not have a cellphone, she would walk three hours; arrive at the hospital/clinic, possibly only to find that the doctor wasn’t even there in the first place. Her child would not be cured, one can only imagine what would happen if the child’s disease was fatal.
Another example would be the rural Ugandan doctor who, faced with an emergency, is able to request information via text message from a hospital in Kampala. To explain this further, let’s say the rural doctor does not have a certain drug to cure his patient; it would be too time consuming to go to all of the other hospitals in the area. If he had a cellphone, he can easily text message all nearby hospitals to see which one has the drug he needed.
Another example would be the porter who spent his days hanging around outside of department stores and construction sites hoping to be hired to carry other people’s loads. But with a cellphone, he can go only where the jobs are. This would save his lots of time and energy and make him more efficient.
And lastly, fishermen off the coast of Kerala in southern India can also better their lives with cellphones. Before having a cellphone, fishermen may catch too much fish without having any potential buyers. (excessive supply, no demand) However, after investing in cellphones, fishermen can use them to call around to prospective buyers before they’d even got their catch to shore, they benefit by increasing their profit while local consumers benefit by the decrease of price of fish in the local marketplace.